


Mirror in the Night

by T_furiosa



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 16:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13551291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/T_furiosa/pseuds/T_furiosa
Summary: Rey dreams of the cave on Ahch-To and this brings her somewhere she never expected.





	Mirror in the Night

_“Rey… Rey…”_

_It’s that voice. The soft, sad voice that has always been there, coming out of the darkness. She is back on Ahch-To, in the cave with two dark figures coming towards her from the other side of that crystal wall. She aches with anticipation. So close, she is so close… But the image flickers._

_“I will come back for you, sweetheart…” This time from behind her. She can almost feel eyes on her back. Before she can turn, she sees a flash of herself, a child again, watching a ship fly away. “Rey.” The fractured surface in front of her now shows just the one figure, coming close, stopping in front of her. For a moment, she has a flash of clarity, but then it slips away._

_The wall becomes a mirror and she’s left with only her reflection. Even in Rey’s dreams, the cave refuses to yield its secrets. She is alone again, and now she cannot stop the tears. The mirror goes dark._

_“Rey.” But now it’s HIS voice. Near her. The last voice she wants to hear. “Rey!” So insistent. She feels a gentle hand come down over her head, and this pulls her out of the dream._

“Rey…”

Rey jolts awake and turns over to find herself face to face with Kylo Ren. He is nearly looming over her, a hip slung up on her sleeping berth, his knee grazing her side. His hand is retreating away from her. She jumps back, beyond startled, and nearly falls off the other side of the berth… though that should be impossible. She sleeps with her back to the wall.

“Why are you here?” she demands, not able to keep the surprise and fear out of her voice.

His lips twitch, almost as if to smile, and he throws out a hollow sound that wants to be a laugh.

“That’s my question. You came to me,” he says, as he waves his hand lightly, the gesture too flippant for the intensity of his gaze. Rey takes a look over his shoulder, then does a full scan of their surroundings.

She has seen this room before, the sparse and sterile place that Kylo Ren makes home. So like Jakku, in a way, desolate and full of nothing. But the desert nights were not as cold as this place. No, this room is a different kind of scorching. A slow freeze from the inside out.

This reminder of Jakku makes Rey calm. This is their bond. She is in no danger here.

Rey dares to look up at him, and Kylo holds her gaze, looking straight into her; he’s just so huge, not just his body but his feelings too, and she knows she can’t speak without betraying herself. Unconsciously, she swipes her wrist across her eyes. She doesn’t want to show him her tears.

“Why are you here?” he uses her question against her, but without malice. His eyes are unfathomably sad, and he is, as always, so gentle. Rey sees it then, senses it too. Kylo Ren is afraid.

“I…” No, she can’t bear it. She looks away.

“Rey.” It’s not a demand, but his voice reveals his barely-bottled impatience.

What can she tell him? How could she put to words the swirl of emotions inside her? When she last saw him, he was kneeling in the dust inside the cave on Crait and she slammed the Falcon door to shut him out of her mind, and her heart. It has been several weeks since then, and though she often finds herself thinking of him, wondering about him… it had seemed like their connection was over.

“Why did you touch me?” she asks, shifting to her knees so they are nearly the same height. Does she mean now, because she is certain the hand that woke her from her dream was real? Or does she mean before, back in the hut, when she saw what they were supposed to be? She is close enough to touch him now, but she doesn’t.

Some fleeting disappointment comes into his eyes, but it’s gone before she can be certain. Again, he looks wounded, as if his loneliness were a hole waiting to swallow them both.

“You were crying,” he replies, lower lip twitching, a helpless look stealing across his face. She wants to deny it, to look away, but she won’t. She couldn’t lie to him even if she wanted to. He knows her too well.

“It was just a dream,” she says, her voice softening. The need to comfort him is overwhelming; his loneliness is her own. Thousands of solitary nights on Jakku opened an abyss inside her heart, and it is from that same abyss that Kylo Ren watches her now. How many of those nights had he spent in this room, just as inconsolable as she?

“Then memories are just dreams, too,” he says, and then he reaches out. Slowly. Just a bit at a time. Rey does not pull away as he bridges the space between them and puts his hand to her cheek. He moves his thumb across the trail of tears there and wipes them away.

She cannot breathe. She cannot move. She wants to run but yet, this is where Rey belongs. This is why she is here.

“Ben…” she whispers. His eyes flash at the name, but his hand stays. Her hand rises to meet his and she covers it with her own. Her resolve flickers to life again. She will help him save himself. Somehow, she will bring him home. She wills these feelings to reach him.

She can’t tell how long they sit like that, hands clasped, barely daring to breathe. Then Rey feels the tug that always comes when their moments together end.

“Don’t go,” he says. There is real fear in his eyes now, no mistake. Rey knows because she feels it too. His hand leaves her face and slides down her neck to her shoulder, as if to hold her there.

“I am never really gone,” she says, and then Kylo’s room grows dim around him. The last thing she sees is her own tears, mirrored on his cheeks, and the bond cuts out. Her berth feels tiny now—she feels tiny now—but the hope inside her knows no bounds.

**Author's Note:**

> Mood Music:   
> Lord Huron, “The Night We Met”  
> Susie Suh, “Here With Me”  
> The Smashing Pumpkins, “Disarm”  
> Note:  
> I have only seen TLJ three times, but I am more and more certain that the person on the other side of the crystal wall WAS Kylo. Not Ben. Kylo. And that until Rey is able to see past herself, clear away the distorted image of who she is and where she’s come from, what she is supposed to be, she won’t be able to see what’s over there, beyond the veil. She won’t be able to see and understand Kylo for what he is too, because her point of view is so clouded. She see only herself now because she needs to gain greater understanding to see what’s beyond herself.  
> Luke too saw only what he wanted to see in Ben Solo; he saw the darkness, and his own chance to again be a hero and snuff out a threat. He didn’t, perhaps couldn’t, see the real Ben. “Lose Rey, we must not,” says Yoda. I don’t think he means just in the physical, don’t-let-her-fall-to-the-Dark-Side sense. He also means “Don’t lose her to the vision of what we want her to be.” Luke may not have wanted to lose Ben, but he let his vision be clouded by his own prejudices and hubris. If he does the same to Rey, she will never be able to clear the mirror, so to speak. She will always just see her own reflection.  
> I like to imagine what would happen if that scene were done with Kylo Ren instead. What would he ask a magic mirror to show him? I think whatever it might be, he is trying to live that image now: he is the Supreme Leader… this is where he thinks he is supposed to be. He has a clouded vision of himself as well, and it stays that way because the people around him refused to see him for what he is.  
> The New Trilogy seems to me to be all about self-acceptance, clearing away the grubbystains on the mirror (indeed, shattering it, killing it if we have to.) This trilogy sheds the hokey optimism of the Original, and the disenchanted angst of the Prequels, and offers a chance for this franchise to be reborn; black and white do not serve our characters, and absolutes have no place in the world they most want to create.  
> I really hope that Episode IX is going to give Rey her due and let her shatter that mirror, cross to other side, and help Kylo Ren free himself. And I hope that Force Ghost Luke gets to see that, or at least gets to give a hearty, happy nod at the end. And I hope that I, as a dedicated fan, feel inclined to do the same when I walk out of that theater in December 2019.


End file.
